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This shows the album had more original songs than I thought at first. Wild Wild Woman and Chicago North Western were to have been singles. I had tracked down several other "wild woman" songs but John's rendering of the concept compared with the best of them.

He says Wild, wild woman was not written for anyone in particular. Fast Train was written for his future wife, who lived in the west of England and Tom was written for his cat Mr Jinx.

There's still uncertainty about what will happen with the material. John's current thinking is that it's too unfinished to publish as a cohesive album. It would be a shame if the band's many fans never got a chance to hear any of it. If you're one of those, why not post your ideas here.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

John Pac's been in touch about the lost album and revealed a fascinating snippet of information - the song People and Places was in fact written as an entry for the 1974 Eurovision song contest. John says it "did quite well" but didn't make the final six in the Song for Europe contest that was used to select the British entry. If it had made the shortlist, it would have been sung by Grease star Olivia Newton-John, who had been chosen by the BBC to represent Britain that year, and sang all the short-listed songs on primetime TV.

She went on to sing a song called Long Live Love, which, ironically, was a pseudo-gospel number. It didn't win - there was stiff competition that year. The winner was an obscure band from Sweden called Abba with a song called Waterloo.

Resisting the temptation to post a youtube video of Abba, here is the British entry. And here's a link to the sample of People and Places that's available with the Simply...Parchment CD (see left). I know which I prefer - but could Olivia Newton-John have sung the song as well as Sue McClellan? People and Places was, of course, re-recorded by the band for the Rehearsal for a Reunion album.